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Legacy Computing & Text-Mode Game Symbols945 symbols
Graphics characters from the home-computer and teletext era — the sprite kit of text-mode games. Open any one for its name and the fonts that have it.
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Symbols for legacy computing #symbols-for-legacy-computing
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About legacy computing & text-mode game symbols
These two blocks exist for one reason: preservation. The home computers and terminals of the 1970s and 80s each drew with their own graphics characters — Commodore's PETSCII shapes, teletext's chunky sextants, the line and quadrant pieces of a dozen terminal standards — and when those machines died, their alphabets of pictures risked dying with them. Unicode encoded the shapes so old text, old screenshots and old games stay readable.
The shapes are still useful because they solve grid problems: quadrant and sextant blocks give sub-cell resolution, the continuous verticals and horizontals draw without seams, and the keytop and control symbols label things no other block covers. Roguelike and retro-computing communities keep them in daily use — a text-mode game drawn in these characters is using the same kit, preserved on purpose.